Republicans threaten hunger strike

THE spectre of republican hunger strikes looms over the North’s prison regime as inmates on a “dirty protest” planned new action.

Inmates linked to the Real IRA and other dissident terror organisations who are staging their protest by smearing excrement over cell walls in Maghaberry prison were prepared to die, supporters said yesterday.

Fears have also been raised that prison officers could be harmed as the crisis deepens.

It is understood the campaign the republicans want to be separated from loyalists at the high-security complex near Lisburn, Co Antrim is set to intensify and spread to Magilligan Prison, Co Derry.

Even though the authorities are confident the segregation bid does not have widespread backing, inmates at the second jail are plotting wrecking sprees or even temporary fasts in a show of solidarity, sources said. Nearly three weeks into the protest, there was also a growing threat of the first full-blown hunger strike in more than 20 years.

Marian Price, chair of the Real IRA-linked Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association, said the protesters were determined.

"They told me they will take it as far as they need to," she said.

In 1981 IRA men inside the Maze Prison went on a fast to gain political status. Ten of them died.

Ms Price, who was jailed for her part in the 1973 IRA bomb attacks on London, went on hunger strike herself in protest at being kept in an English jail. She was released in 1980. She warned: "If one of these young men dies in prison there are going to be consequences. Lives will not be lost on just one side."

Edwin Poots, a Democratic Unionist councillor in Lisburn, said he feared the protest could lead to attacks on staff.

"They are talking about hunger strikes and I suspect it won't be long until they try to knock off a prison officer," he said.

The protesters say that being forced to share cells and wings with loyalists on remand has put republicans' lives in danger.

But prison chiefs have accused the dissidents of manufacturing a crisis in a bid to gain control of part of the jail.